


Despite Everything

by ama



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Drabble, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 20:11:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1615565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ama/pseuds/ama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night Grant is shot, Speirs comes to him. (Prompted by the song "Human," by Daughter)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Despite Everything

The night Grant is shot, Speirs comes to him. Lipton is in a room with Nixon and Winters and Welsh, talking in low voices about what to do with the replacement (they are all diligently pretending they have no idea what's going on downstairs) when Speirs comes in. His face is pale and there are droplets of blood on his hands.

"He'll live," he says shortly. "Lip?"

"Which one?" Nixon asks in a dry voice.

"Both. _Lip_?"

He repeats Lipton's name fiercely and it sounds like, if he were to say it again, his voice might break. Behind him, Lipton can feel Welsh and Nixon exchanging a glance, but he just looks for Winters' permission. Winters nods.

"I'll have a talk with the NCOs, make sure they look after the men. The rest of you... try to get some sleep. There's nothing more we can do for Grant tonight, and Doc Roe's going to stay with him, just in case."

So Lipton leaves the room and follows Speirs's back to the one he has chosen. It has been stripped bare, and the mattress has been pulled onto the floor. He understands that. Sometimes he falls asleep and he dreams that he's back home, and that's the worst thing about war, the absolute worst. Lipton would rather be miserable in a foxhole all the time than dreaming of home, and Speirs is the consummate soldier. He knows that the present is safer than the past or the future.

Now he sets his firearms near the head of the mattress and he falls onto it, his head in his hands. Lipton sits next to him and, hesitantly, rests a hand on his back.

"I didn't shoot him."

"That's okay," he says after a pause. "The boys handled him all right. They gave him hell, and now he's going to have to live to face his shame."

"Fuck shame," Speirs snarls, but beneath his hand Lipton can feel the way his lungs jump and jerk, feels the sob before it happens. "He deserves to _die_. Why didn't I shoot him?"

"Because the war is supposed to be over. Because we're all supposed to live."

He doesn't know where the words came from; he doesn't know if they're true. He knows that, if Speirs was really trying to be a soldier and nothing more, then he wouldn't have even bothered to sleep on this expensive, soft mattress--he would have kipped in his sleeping bag on the floor. He wouldn't be hoarding souvenirs by the bucketload, because he wouldn't be thinking of a time when he would need to _remember_ war. He would have shot that bastard from I Company, the way he shot drunk men and German POWs, without mercy and without thought.

Speirs turns and buries his face in Lipton's shoulder. He cries and he swears, the tears warm against Lipton's neck and the words biting. He holds Speirs as tight as he can, so tight that his fingers might be leaving bruises in the curve of his shoulder, but Speirs doesn't object. They stay like that for a long time, the strength and the heat reminding them that they are alive and human. Outside there are no sounds of war. No gunshots, no artillery, only the occasional rumble of jeeps rolling past. Lipton closes his eyes and thinks of the terrifying stillness and cold of Bastogne, and the burning touch of Speirs's lips against his neck as he asks questions, nonsense questions, questions that neither of them know the answer to.

 

_Underneath the skin there's a human_   
_Buried deep within there's a human_   
_And despite everything I'm still human_   
_But I think I'm dying here_


End file.
